King’s Mill Trust gets clean bill of health

Andy Done-Johnson

The NHS trust which runs King’s Mill and Mansfield Community Hospital has had the last of three warning notices issued by a Government health watchdog lifted.

In a statement issued by Sherwood Forest Hospital’s NHS Trust, it states that the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which regulates health and social care providers, concluded that significant improvements have been made at the trust’s three sites.

This means that it can now lift its Section 29A notice in relation to the trust’s regulated activities - relating to keeping patients safe and well, and quality of service.

A separate notice, relating to how the trust manages sepsis at its sites, was lifted earlier this year.

The trust was rated as “inadequate” following a CQC inspection in 2015, and the Section 29A notice and two others were issued at the same time in accordance with the Health and Social Care Act.

An unannounced inspection by regulators in July this year found that the trust had made the necessary improvements required to put in place systems and the appropriate resources to both monitor the safety and quality of care effectively, and to identify lessons to be learned and implement changes to practice where needed.

The CQC is expected to publish the findings of its recent re-inspection and confirm the trust’s performance rating later this year.

Trust managing director Peter Herring said: “We put in place a comprehensive quality improvement programme to address the concerns identified by the CQC and to embed the necessary changes into the organisation.

“Although there is still more to do, we have made very good progress over the past year, and this is reflected in our strong performance against national standards and the improved feedback we are getting from patients and staff.

“The lifting of the formal notice is yet another marker of the significant progress we have made, and I would like to thank staff for their continuing focus and dedication to improve patient care so notably over the past year.”